Search Results for: blog a white bird flying bess streeter aldrich

Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen

Water for Elephants is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. I hesitated to read it. Several friends had recommended the book, it’s a New York Times Bestseller, and it was on several great books of the year lists. I thought I’d be disappointed. It couldn’t be that good. But it was. The story is told in alternating chapters by Jacob Jankowski as a ninety or maybe ninety-three year old (he’s lost track) and as a twenty-three year old. The young Jacob is close to graduating veterinary school at Cornell. Even though the country is in … Continue reading →

The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver

I’ve seen this book reviewed in scads of places and heard people talking about it, so I wanted to read it for myself and see if it measured up (in my estimation) to all the press it’s been getting. The book takes place in the 1960s. Nathan Price is a preacher who feels called to go to the Belgian Congo to teach Christianity to the natives. He takes along his wife, Orleanna, and their four daughters: Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May. They can only take the barest of necessities, but they hardly know what those necessities might be, having … Continue reading →

The Probable Future – Alice Hoffman

“The Probable Future” by Alice Hoffman is a little more earthy than the other books I’ve chosen to review here on Families.com, but the story is so intriguing, I thought it was worth presenting, with that caveat. I was fascinated by these women and their amazing gifts, and wanted to share their story with you. Three hundred years ago, a young woman wandered out of nowhere, unable to speak English, her hands and feet blistered and raw, and she was taken in by a local family. They had no idea what her name was or why she was there, but … Continue reading →

Accepting Joy – Todd F. Cope

“Accepting Joy” by author Todd F. Cope is the story of Andrew and Rachel, a young couple who are moving into their new home and also expecting their first child. The house they bought is in a quiet area, and their nearest neighbor is a little ways down the road. The house was built some years before and does need some modernizing, but Rachel is sure she can make it wonderful. Andrew heads down the road to meet his new neighbor, Hank, only to be treated brusquely. He comes to find out that Hank is rumored to be a murderer, … Continue reading →

Sam’s Letters to Jennifer – James Patterson

Jennifer has recently lost Danny, the love of her life, and she’s trying to put the pieces back together, without much success. When news reaches her that her grandmother has had a fall and is in the hospital, she leaves right away, heading out to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to be by her grandmother’s side. Sam, short for Samantha, is the only person in the world Jennifer has left, and if anything were to happen to her, Jennifer’s not sure she could make it. She returns to the house on the lake she knows so well, surprised and yet not surprised … Continue reading →

Summer Reading

Here we are, just a few short hours away from the official start of summer, even though we’ve have temperatures in the 90’s for quite a while where I live. School’s out, kids are home, moms are busy – and that doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for reading. Many children do their reading in conjunction with school, and this is why libraries set up summer reading programs, to give kids the incentive to keep reading when they’re not at school. You can check with your library to see what they’re offering by way of reward – we got … Continue reading →

Counting Stars – Michele Paige Holmes

Literally less than one week off the press, “Counting Stars” by Michele Paige Holmes is possibly the newest LDS fiction book on the market. I had the privilege of picking up one of the first copies at a signing this last Saturday. The book was different from other LDS romances I’ve read. Our main character is Jane Warner, a woman who will shortly be thirty and is unmarried. That’s bad enough by itself, but her family teases her, prays for her, and wonders if she’ll ever get married. Turns out, it’s pretty hard to get married when you’re not even … Continue reading →

The Song of the Lark – Willa Cather

“The Song of the Lark” by Willa Cather is similar in a lot of ways to “A White Bird Flying” by Bess Streeter Aldrich. “Lark,” too, is about a young girl who grows up knowing that she has a gift and wants to develop it into everything it can and should be, in this case the talent of singing, whereas in “Bird,” the talent is writing. Thea Kronberg is our heroine in “Lark.” The daughter of a preacher with seven children, she understands that her place is to help with the children, do her chores, and be obedient. Beyond that, … Continue reading →

Tristi’s Picks: Best Novels Read in 2006

Happy New Year! For my first blog of 2007 (this is rather a momentous occasion!) I thought I would answer a question that is regularly posed to me. Because of the large amounts of reading I do, I am asked: “What are the best books you’ve read recently?” And so I give you my top ten list of novels I read in the year 2006. It was hard to rank them; they all deserve the #1 slot, but after careful consideration, this is the order I finally chose. Click on the title to read the full review! 1. “I Capture … Continue reading →

A White Bird Flying — Bess Streeter Aldrich

I have read several books by this Nebraskan author of early last century, and while I enjoyed them all, this one is my favorite. I identified personally with the main character, Laura Deal, on many different levels and so this book spoke to me in ways that the others didn’t. We start the story with Laura Deal at twelve years old, visiting the house of her recently departed grandmother one last time. She walks through the house dispassionately at first, seeing herself as one of the characters in the stories she loves to write, but then the realization that her … Continue reading →